The birth and death of an oil boom, extreme drought, a dwindling water supply—the residents and businesses of the Cuyama Valley have seen it all. Those who have survived have done so through self-sufficiency, resiliency, and creativity, and those are the characteristics several Cuyama businesses and organizations are hoping to tap into through a new initiative aimed at reinvigorating and diversifying the region’s economy.
Through the recently launched Reimagining Resilience campaign, the Cuyama Buckhorn, the Blue Sky Center, Rock Front Ranch, and High Desert Print Co. are teaming up to bring attention to the many products grown and made in the Cuyama Valley, an effort that they hope will eventually help to create sustainable jobs and industries in the area.
For the Blue Sky Center, a nonprofit that has long worked to support entrepreneurs and economic resources in the region, that endeavor is taking shape in the form of a new for-profit business venture: Cuyama Beverage Company.
“It is a risk for our nonprofit,” Blue Sky Center Executive Director Em Johnson said, “but we believe it’s a necessary one.”
While nonprofits are often born out of and funded by for-profit businesses, Johnson said it’s admittedly rare for things to happen the other way around. But she said the Blue Sky Center needed a more stable source of funding that’s not reliant upon outside sources, one that mirrors the self-sufficiency of so many Cuyama residents.
The Blue Sky Center launched Cuyama Beverage Company in early March, both as a way to fund its own operations and to support other local businesses and growers. Using locally sourced ingredients, Johnson said the company’s session-style meads will help support local growers and highlight their products when sold throughout the Central Coast. Cuyama Beverage Company’s first release is a delicate and effervescent sage honey wine made with honey from Rock Front Ranch, a local grower that Johnson said is focused on environmentally sustainable agricultural practices and crops.
Johnson said that kind of drought-tolerant mindset will likely be vital in coming years in Cuyama, which is home to a critically overdrafted groundwater basin, one of several such basins throughout the state.
“So for us this beverage really personifies what the Cuyama Valley has, and what we want to invest in in the future,” Johnson told the Sun.
But through the creation of its new business, Johnson said the Blue Sky Center has run into many of the same barriers that have stopped other potential entrepreneurs and business owners from setting up shop in Cuyama, including a Santa Barbara County policy that prohibits food and beverage processing in much of the Cuyama Valley. So while Cuyama Beverage Co.’s ingredients are local, the drinks have to be brewed elsewhere on the Central Coast.
Johnson said the Blue Sky Center is working with the county to learn more about the obstacles.
“So we’re really using this opportunity as a time for advocacy,” she said.
Cuyama Beverage Co. drinks will be readily available at the Cuyama Buckhorn, which unveiled its completed restoration in March. Marketing and Operations Manager Savannah Fox said that through the Reimagining Resilience initiative, the Buckhorn plans to highlight locally grown products in its restaurant, coffee shop, and specialty goods market, a recent addition to the hotel that came about as a way to offer further grocery access during the pandemic.
As a hotel and one of the main stops for people who are even just passing through Cuyama, Fox said the Buckhorn hopes to act as a liaison between the little known products of Cuyama and the outside world, a place where visitors are introduced to all the tiny high desert valley has to offer.
“In every aspect we can,” Fox said, “we’re pulling locally.”
This article appears in Apr 15-22, 2021.